It
was my proudest moment as the assistant editor of Boulder's own Soldier of
Fortune Magazine. On a platform in Las Vegas, I introduced our war-hero
publisher, Col. Robert K. Brown, and Joel Myrick—vice principal of Pearl
High School in Pearl, Miss.

The
year before I had introduced retired Gen. Paul Tibbets, who dropped the A-bomb
on Hiroshima and ushered in the end of World War II. Like Tibbets, Myrick was
receiving our annual Humanitarian Award. Myrick symbolizes freedom and peace,
as a man who saved the lives of children with selfless disregard for his own
life and professional welfare.

At
Virginia Tech Monday, no heroes emerged. All that was left after a morning of
bloodshed was the carnage of dead and injured victims, all rendered defenseless
by laws and university bureaucrats running for cover. The bad guy won hands
down, scoring a record kill. He won because the Virginia General Assembly, a
year earlier, decided that heroes aren't allowed at Virginia Tech. Loudly and
clearly, with the applause of cops and Virginia Tech bureaucrats, politicians
enshrined in law the message that college students would remain defenseless
targets for rapists and murderous sociopaths.

Like
Virginia Tech's Cho Seung-Hui, Pearl High School's16-year-old Luke Woodham was
an angry maniac with a plan for mass murder. But Myrick foiled his plan.

Woodham
began his day Oct. 1, 1997, by slashing his mother's throat. Then he grabbed a
deer rifle and headed off to Pearl High School, where Vice Principal Myrick was
at work. At the school, Woodham shot and killed his girlfriend and another
girl.

Myrick,
a short distance away, heard the shots. His instinct was to draw his handgun
and take the killer down. But Myrick had obeyed a federal law that forbids guns
on school grounds—a law the murderer broke. Myrick's gun was off campus
in his pickup. As Myrick ran to retrieve it, Woodham shot seven more students.

Having
sent dozens of victims scurrying for their lives, Woodham fled. Authorities
learned later he was heading for the junior high, to find unsuspecting
victims—just as Cho Seung-Hui did after he killed two students in a dorm
and headed to Norris Hall.

But
unlike Cho Seung-Hui, Woodham never left the parking lot, because Myrick
returned with his gun. He pointed the gun at Woodham, causing the boy to crash
his car. He ordered Woodham to the ground, and held him at gunpoint until
police came. He's a world-class hero.

Myrick's
story and others like it have made one thing clear to those with IQs above 80:
Gun control kills children. It disarms those who obey the law—heroes like
the Harvard-educated Joel Myrick. In doing so, it leaves easy prey for any
suicidal monster who needs only a few minutes for an unimpeded killing spree.
No gun law in anyone's wildest imagination derails the plans of a suicidal
sociopath.

One
cannot intelligently dispute, in this age of school massacres, that gun control
kills our youth. Those who can't see this are astonishingly stupid. The studies
are in, the murders in "gun free" zones have become routine, and the proof
simply leaves no reasonable doubt.

This
indisputable fact—that gun control abets murder—led Virginia State
Delegate Todd Gilbert to introduce House Bill 1572 in 2006. The bill would have
prohibited "rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student
who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit from lawfully carrying a
concealed handgun" on a state university campus. It would have negated the
Virginia Tech "no guns" rule that absolutely, positively, beyond question
facilitated Cho Seung-Hui in killing 32 students and wounding dozens of others.
Without that rule—identical to the policy at the University of Colorado
and most other colleges—it's hard to imagine a scenario in which some
student or teacher, in gun-rich Virginia, wouldn't have shot Cho Seung-Hui
during his murder spree.

Yet
cops, university officials and a majority of politicians embrace laws that
create defenseless victim zones.

When
Gilbert's bill died in committee, Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said:
"I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's
actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel
safe on our campus." Moron.

When
a Virginia Tech student with a concealed carry permit was discovered with his
gun on campus in 2005, the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police backed
university officials for disciplining him. Yet, whenever some monster shoots up
a school, cops arrive late on the scene. They scurry about, wondering what on
earth they should do. Inside, students disarmed by gun control, die by the
score.

"We're
in the era of the maniac," said Geraldo Rivera, struggling with his colleagues
to understand why school massacres have become routine.

Suddenly
we have a surplus of maniacs? Hardly. Fact is, Geraldo, it's the era of the
"gun free zone." To the sociopath, this rightly means "defenseless victim
zone," or "hostility release zone."

President
Bush told us Monday that "schools should be places of sanctuary, safety and
learning." If so, then please stop idiot politicians from depriving students
and faculty their rights to possess guns. Stop them from guaranteeing the
maniac that he alone, on any bad day, can possess more firepower than 30,000
students and faculty in a modern "defenseless victim zone."